Carbon Trading Voodoo

Caught a documentary on CBC last night about "Carbon Hunters." These are young entrepreneurs who scour the world looking for ways to identify eco-friendly projects that might qualify for lucrative carbon credits.

The show gave a few examples. Prairie farmers who don't plough the soil anymore but use a different tilling technique that doesn't release as much carbon from the soil. Bingo, carbon credits! Or a Texas oilman who got his hands on 2-million acres of Amazonian rainforest. Bingo, ginormous carbon credits. Or a village in India where the locals gather up their cattle poop, mix it up in a tank, draw off the methane emitted and pipe that through to their homes for cooking fuel. You guessed it, carbon credits.

Here's the deal. Do we grant these annual carbon credits in perpetuity - forever and ever, amen? For the prairie farmers, I could see giving them credits for a few years, at least long enough to give them some incentive to shoulder the cost of new farm machinery, but forever? No way. And what about all those cattle in India? Sure you've collected all the crap and beautified your neighbourhood but you were going to burn that poop anyway and, besides, what about all the methane those cows fart out all day long that you don't capture? That's the real problem and you're not doing one damned thing about it. In fact, you might find it worthwhile to start aquiring more cows because they're now genuine cash cows.

Okay, where are my carbon credits? I was fixing to breed myself a herd of cattle but no, in the interests of the environment and to fight global warming, I've decided to deny myself those cattle. So, I'm saving the world not only from their poop but their farts to boot (no, don't try to visualize that at home).

This is a scam with all the efficacy of paying farmers not to grow stuff. You wind up with the carbon credit scammers raking in bucks to provide political cover for GHG-emitting industries.

I think Monbiot was right. This carbon trading business is really just like moving food around your plate with a fork.

“Carbon trading was an idea with potential but the danger is that

it so rapidly develops into a scam.”

- James Lovelock

Carbon Trading a Scam? Who Could've Known?

Big polluters in the West have really taken to carbon offset programmes. It's nothing more than paying some government or corporation in the Third World to implement some form of GHG reduction programme to "offset" the excessive emissions of its Western patron. It's what George Monbiot has described as moving food around on a plate.

What's wrong with carbon trading? Nothing, in theory. In practise, however, there's plenty wrong with it

A key problem is that it relies on the industrial polluter to fund a project that will actually result in a reduction of GHG emissions and that wasn't already in the works anyway. It's sort of like letting the banditos guard the stagecoach. From The Guardian:

"Leading academics and watchdog groups allege that the UN's main offset fund is being routinely abused by chemical, wind, gas and hydro companies who are claiming emission reduction credits for projects that should not qualify. The result is that no genuine pollution cuts are being made, undermining assurances by the UK government and others that carbon markets are dramatically reducing greenhouse gases, the researchers say.

The criticism centres on the UN's clean development mechanism (CDM), an international system established by the Kyoto process that allows rich countries to meet emissions targets by funding clean energy projects in developing nations.

A working paper from two senior Stanford University academics examined more than 3,000 projects applying for or already granted up to $10bn of credits from the UN's CDM funds over the next four years, and concluded that the majority should not be considered for assistance. "They would be built anyway," says David Victor, law professor at the Californian university. "It looks like between one and two thirds of all the total CDM offsets do not represent actual emission cuts."

Governments consider that CDM is vital to reducing global emissions under the terms of the Kyoto treaty. To earn credits under the mechanism, emission reductions must be in addition to those that would have taken place without the project. But critics argue this "additionality" is impossible to prove and open to abuse. The Stanford paper, by Victor and his colleague Michael Wara, found that nearly every new hydro, wind and natural gas-fired plant expected to be built in China in the next four years is applying for CDM credits, even though it is Chinese policy to encourage these industries."

It may just be that there are not nearly enough legitimate CDM projects to meet the demands of Western emitters but, if that's the case, there's nothing to be gained from letting them manipulate the process. The UN needs to reform the process, perhaps by eliminating the brokers and taking in-house the job of identifying qualifying CDM investments.